New SCA ruling affirms lack of collaboration from Tropigas

This Competition Superintendency release was published using machine translation.

On March 3 this Superintendency of Competition (SC) received notification from the Administrative Litigation Chamber (SCA), confirming that Tropigas El Salvador breached the Competition Law by inaccurately providing the information required in 2011 as part of an investigation preliminary, in the liquefied petroleum gas market.

This is the second ruling in favor received by this Superintendency so far in 2020 and confirms that there are no flaws of illegality alleged by Tropigas of El Salvador against the Board of Directors of the Superintendency of Competition (CDSC), with a fine of $ 59,097.60 imposed in 2013 for breach of article 38, paragraph 6 of the Competition Law, having inaccurately provided the required information.

These preliminary investigations, called Previous Actions, are established in art. 41 of the Competition Law and aim to inspect and find out the existence of possible anti-competitive practices. The investigations initiated in 2011 sought to collect indications, in the Liquefied Petroleum Gas market, regarding competition problems arising from the elimination of the respective subsidy.

The Superintendency, in compliance with its powers and considering the possible impact on the economy of Salvadoran households and efficiency in the market, requested information from the Ministry of Economy, the Consumer Ombudsman, among other authorities; as well as to economic agents linked to this market, in order to analyze the operation of the import, production and distribution chain of this product in the country.

In the framework of such investigations, Tropigas gave information inaccurately. Specifically, the SC warned that the unit prices for the sale of gas cylinders reported by said company did not include the value added tax (VAT), even though it had asserted otherwise. This fact was noticed almost at the conclusion of the investigation, which delayed its completion and complicated the precision of the conclusions.

In accordance with what was determined by the Board of Directors of the SC “Tropigas caused as a logical consequence a delay and, consequently, damage to the processing of the procedure of previous actions and, in addition, it could have caused much greater damage if there had been a pronouncement on the basis of that inaccurate information. "

The SCA concludes in its ruling: “The attitude of the plaintiff (…) represented a clear obstruction to the performance of the investigation and investigation tasks of the Superintendency of Competition and, in essence, a restriction and limitation in the knowledge of the chain for the production, import and distribution of liquefied petroleum gas. ” It is important to note that the performance of this competition authority occurs within the framework of its legal powers and in protection of consumers, when possible alterations or failures that could affect efficiency in the market and the welfare of consumers are detected.